"Baloo is a sixteenth-century ballad, not a seventeenth. It is alluded to by several of our early dramatists, and the tune is to be found in an early Elizabethan MS. known as William Ballet's Lute Book, as well as in Morley's Consort Lessons, printed in 1599. The words and tune are together in John Gamble's Music Book, a MS. in the possession of Dr. Rimbault, (date 1649,) and in Elizabeth Rogers's Virginal Book, in the library of the British Museum (Addit. MS. 10,337). The last is dated 1658, but the copy may have been taken some few years after. Baloo was so popular a subject that it was printed as a street ballad, with additional stanzas, just as 'My lodging it is on the cold ground' and other popular songs were lengthened for the same purpose. It has been reprinted in that form by Evans, in his Old Ballads, Historical and Narrative, edit. 1810, vol. i. p. 259. The title is 'The New Balow; or A Wenches Lamentation for the loss of her Sweetheart: he having left her a babe to play with, being the fruits of her folly.' The particular honour of having been the 'wench' in question was first claimed for 'Lady Anne Bothwell' in Part iii. of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, published by Watson in Edinburgh in 1711. Since that date Scotch antiquaries have been very busy in searching into the scandalous history of the Bothwell family, to find out which of the Lady Annes might have been halla-balooing.
"May we not release the whole race from this imputation? The sole authority for the charge is Watson's Collection! the same book that ascribes to the unfortunate Montrose the song of 'My dear and only love, take heed,' and tacks it as a second part to his 'My dear and only love, I pray.' Shade of Montrose! how must you be ashamed of your over-zealous advocate! Let us examine whether the spirit of 'Lady Anne Bothwel' has more reason to be grateful. Among the stanzas ascribed to her by Watson are the two following, which are not to be found in any English copy:—
'I take my fate from best to worse
That I must needs now be a nurse,
And lull my young son in my lap.
From me, sweet orphan, take the pap:
Balow, my boy, thy mother mild
Shall sing, as from all bliss exil'd.'
"In the second we find the inducement supposed to have been offered by Lady Anne's lover:
'I was too credulous at the first
To grant thee that a maiden durst,
And in thy bravery thou didst vaunt
That I no maintenance should want:(!)
Thou swear thou lov'd, thy mind is moved,
Which since no otherwise has proved.'
"Comment is unnecessary. Can any one believe that such lines were written by or for any lady of rank? Yet they were copied as Lady Anne's by Allan Ramsay, and polished in his usual style. They have been polished and repolished by subsequent editors, but to little avail, for they remain great blots upon a good English ballad. There is not a Scotch word, nor even one peculiar to the North of England, in the whole of Watson's version."
This attempt to dispute the Scottish origin of the ballad is strongly resented by the editor of the Ballad Minstrelsy of Scotland, Glasgow, 1871. At all events the fact remains that the title "Lady Anne Bothwell's Balow" cannot be traced farther back than Watson's Collection, published in 1711.]
